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Herbert Weiner in San Francisco, Calif. on 12/31/05. Weiner is one of many renters who's been evicted from their apartments under the Ellis Act. He is now living in an apartment in the Richmond District and pays $650 a month more in rent than he did in his last building.
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Herbert Weiner in San Francisco, Calif. on 12/31/05. Weiner is one of many renters who's been evicted from their apartments under the Ellis Act. He is now living in an apartment in the ... more

Photo: PAUL CHINN

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Herbert Weiner in San Francisco, Calif. on 12/31/05. Weiner is one of many renters who's been evicted from their apartments under the Ellis Act. He is now living in an apartment in the Richmond District and pays $650 a month more in rent than he did in his last building.
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Herbert Weiner in San Francisco, Calif. on 12/31/05. Weiner is one of many renters who's been evicted from their apartments under the Ellis Act. He is now living in an apartment in the ... more

Photo: PAUL CHINN

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Ellis Act Evictions. Chronicle Graphic

Ellis Act Evictions. Chronicle Graphic

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SAN FRANCISCO / Renters getting deja vu to bad old dot-com days / Evictions to make way for condos on rise

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After 19 years of living in the same Inner Sunset District apartment, the last thing San Francisco native Herbert Weiner ever expected was to receive an eviction notice.

But when the landlords of his four-unit building invoked the Ellis Act, a state law that lets property owners evict tenants if they are getting out of the rental business, 66-year-old Weiner was sent packing.

"There was anxiety on my part for a whole year," said Weiner, a retired social worker who found a new apartment in the city, but now pays $650 more a month in rent. "It just constantly weighs on you. How can you enjoy your daily living routine if you're thinking about having to move?"

When landlords invoke the law, they typically move tenants out and put the building up for sale as tenancies-in-common, or TICs. The goal for TICs -- real estate transactions popular with first-time home buyers in which a group of people collectively owns a building and shares the mortgage, but lives in separate units -- usually is to convert the building into more valuable condominiums.

There were 330 Ellis Act eviction notices given by landlords to tenants during the 2004-05 fiscal year, which ended in June, according to the Rent Board.

At the height of the dot-com boom and real estate explosion -- during the fiscal year 1999-2000 -- 440 Ellis Act eviction notices were issued in San Francisco.

But while tenants-rights advocates fear such figures mean poor renters will be displaced as the middle class moves in, others welcome the trend and say it means an entirely new crop of home owners was created.

"I'm very proud of the hundreds of affordable home ownership opportunities that I've helped create through 'Ellising' buildings, buildings that were almost exclusively sold to first-time home buyers," said Andrew Zacks, a San Francisco lawyer who handles Ellis Act evictions and other land use cases. "They're buying homes and in neighborhoods where otherwise they would not be able to afford."

There were 1,599 eviction notices issued in the 2004-05 fiscal year for everything from breach of lease to nonpayment of rent, the statistics show.

But during that time, landlords used the Ellis Act more than any other means to evict tenants. Compared with the previous fiscal year, the number of Ellis Act eviction notices jumped 31 percent.

Gullicksen and Zacks, who have long been on opposite sides of the issue, agree on the reason: San Francisco's real estate market is hot.

"At the same time rental rates were dropping, we had housing prices totally skyrocketing," Zacks said.

The Ellis Act, which took effect 1985, was intended to help landlords legally evict tenants and get out of the business of being property owners. Many envisioned that the law would be used by seniors looking to sell off properties.

Zacks, however, said it's unfair to blame the Ellis Act for San Francisco's cutthroat real estate market.

"It's a very expensive place to live, and those pressures exist irrespective of Ellis Act evictions," he said. "It's a complete blip on the radar screen statistically. The notion that 330 Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco is causing gentrification in the city is a stretch."

Weiner, who received his Ellis Act eviction notice in 2004 and spent a year looking for a new place to live, says he is among the lucky ones who managed to stay in San Francisco, despite paying significantly more in rent compared with his previous rent-controlled building.

After he moved out, his building was put on the market for sale, and he believes it will be converted into condominiums.

"I'm concerned about the artists. I'm concerned about the poets. I'm concerned about these guys being driven out of the city," he said. "Yes, it's legal. But the thing is, they're using the law to punish people for being tenants."